The Parrys of Bullock's Wharf

Griffith and Mary Ann Parry were among the early settlers of the Macdonald Valley and the town of St Albans in particular. When they arrived at what is now known as St Albans, it went by the more evocative name of 'Bullock's Wharf'.

Griffith and Mary Ann were the great-grandparents of Lena Parry, so my 3rd great-grandparents.

Griffith William Parry was born in London in 1799, the son of Henry and Catherine Parry. He had a sound education before following his parents into the candle-making trade, so he was a 'tallow-chandler'. He was 20 when he was convicted of stealing a watch and sentenced to transportation for life. He was lucky not to receive the death penalty as he was initially charged with highway robbery!  Arriving in Sydney aboard the Speke in 1821, he was immediately assigned to work for a settler named John Wood at Bringelly, near Liverpool. John Wood must have given him a good report, because in 1824, Griffith was transferred to Windsor and appointed as a Constable. It is surprising to us today that a serving convict could be appointed as a policeman, but that was not unusual at the time.

At Windsor, Griffith met an Irish girl named Mary Ann Mustare. Mary Ann is a difficult girl to research, but seems to have arrived as a free person aboard the Mariner in 1825. She could not read or write, and her name is recorded under various forms such as 'Musty' and 'Musfare'. This, combined with the loss of many Catholic records in Ireland, and the poor documentation about women in general, means we know nothing about Mary Ann's life before she arrived in Australia. She probably arrived as a servant of the Rev Meares, and she was still working for him when she met Griffith.

Griffith and Mary Ann married in Windsor in 1826 and soon started a family. Their first child, a boy, was born the following year and was named Henry after his paternal grandfather. A daughter named Catherine followed in 1828.

Griffith was granted his Ticket of Leave in 1828. This is much like parole today. Then in 1829 he was appointed District Constable at 'Lower Branch', known as Wiseman's Ferry today. He was replacing James Woodbury who had resigned after being severely beaten by escaped convicts who invaded his home. He was only saved when his 12-year-old son, William, opened fire on the invaders. So Griffith's appointment was not without risk to himself and his young family.

Within a few months of his appointment, Griffith's post was moved to Bullocks Wharf on the Macdonald River. The wharf had been built at the limit of navigation on the Macdonald River. The valley was the main informal route for people travelling overland to the Hunter Valley. Griffith and Mary Ann settled themselves on ten acres fronting the river, where in between his duties as constable and pound keeper, Griffith managed to find time to farm the land he had selected. Five more children arrived at regular intervals. The first child born at Macdonald River was a boy, named Griffith William Parry after his father (we do like to make life difficult for future family historians). Griffith Jr. was Lena Parry's Grandfather and will feature in his own family profile, hopefully in two weeks!

Griffith was granted a conditional pardon in 1836. This effectively removed the conditions of his Ticket of Leave and the only remnant of his criminal conviction was that he was not allowed to return to England. But with the pardon, Griffith's dream run with the Colonial administration came to a crashing end. He was dismissed as a constable, apparently for smuggling. Family talk is that he was in cahoots with Samuel Wisemen and a group of other constables and the goods smuggled was liquour. Next, Griffith lost most of his farm when the town of St Albans was surveyed. He argued that he was promised 10 acres, and held out for a few years, but was eventually given just the two acres that contained his house.

Griffith tried his hand at running a school and was Headmaster at a small Wollombi school for a short time, then moved his family to Mangrove Creek. 

Sadly, Mary Ann died in 1844, shortly after the move. While the older children were young adults by this time, the youngest was just four.  According to other family histories, Mary Ann was buried beside a creek at Upper Mangrove.

Griffith was 46 in 1845 when he remarried. His new bride was 26-year-old widow, Margaret Malone nee Kelly. Margaret had been born in Ireland and had arrived in Australia in 1841 with her husband. Owen Maloney. They had two children before Owen died in 1843. 

Griffith and Margaret had another six children, all girls. 

In his later years, Griffith was appointed as the 'Mangrove Creek agent' for the Maitland Mercury newspaper. We know that he was an educated man, which would have stood him out from many of the other settlers in the mangrove Creek area. It is likely that he was the author of some of the items that were published in the newspapers, at the time, usually signed 'from our Mangrove Creek Correspondent'.

Griffith died at Mangrove Creek in 1959. He was 60. He was buried in what is now known as the Dubbo Gully Cemetery at Upper Mangrove. Two of his daughters from his first marriage are also buried there, and Mary Ann's headstone is also located beside Griffith (possibly relocated from her lonely bush grave).

Margaret survived Griffith by 43 years. She died in 1902. She was buried at the catholic cemetery Spencer with her first husband, Owen Malone. 

I am intrigued by the religious dynamic that must have played out in the Parry household over the years. Griffith was quite a religious man I think and was a staunch supporter of the Church of England community in Mangrove Creek. His first wife, Mary Ann, was a Catholic, but all their children were raised to be Church of England. Margaret Maloney (nee Kelly) was also an Irish Catholic, much younger than Griffith. It seems that all her children were raised in the catholic faith, although at least one married as Church of England. Margaret and two of their daughters were buried in the Catholic cemetery at Spencer. 

Griffith Parry's story is very well documented in official records, many of which can be found in the resources section on his page on my website. The Colonial records were extensive and repetitive, but each document often adds another snippet of information. It is no coincidence that there are 10 documents about Griffith for every one about Mary Ann. Married women were often excluded from the records completely. Mary Ann possibly contributed equally to the success of the Parry family, but scarcely rates a mention in any of the official records. This is one of the reasons behind my writing biographies of the family, rather than the individual people. Individual biographies of the women would be very sparse compared to the men, not because they played a lesser role, but because the society of the day largely pretended that they were not there!

Job Miller and Susan Rumble, goldrush immigrants

I have been following the maternal ancestry of my grandmother, Lena Parry. Today I will cover the story of her grandparents, Job Miller and Susan Rumble.

Job Miller was born in Elmdon, Essex in 1828, the son of Job and Jane Miller. His family had been in the area for many generations and were working class people. Job was named after his father, and the name has biblical origins. It is pronounced 'jobe' and rhymes with 'robe'. Job grew up in Elmdon and would have started work as an agricultural labourer about the age of 12. 

Job was 19 when he married Sarah Chester in 1848. Sarah was a straw bonnet maker. Their first child, George was baptised in Elmdon in July 1852.

Susan Rumble was born in Barkway ,Hertfordshire in 1831, daughter of Joseph and Sarah  Rumble. Barkway is only about five miles from Elmdon. Like. The Rumble family had been in the general area for many generations and her father's family were from a village almost next door to Elmdon. In fact, Susan and Job were probably 4th cousins. Both had John and Ruth Pity in their ancestry, five generations before!

Susan's mother died when Susan was 10. Her father moved the family back to his home village of Little Chishall in Essex, which is less than three miles from Elmdon. Susan's father worked as an agricultural labourer, and Susan possibly cared for her younger siblings.

By 1850, conditions for agricultural workers in England were tough. Many of the big landholders were mechanising the harvesting and processing of crops and wages for labourers were vfalling. Meanwhile the British colonies in Australia were growing rapidly and were desperate for workers. The British Government would pay the fare for any workers willing to emigrate to the colonies. The attraction increased substantially after gold was discovered in 1851 and by 1853 there was a full-blown gold rush under way. Other families from the Elmdon area took up the Government assistance, including Job's aunt, Susannah Barker, nee Corbey, who had emigrated to Victoria with her whole family in 1851.

Job and  Sarah took their infant son and boarded the Dea in February 1953, arriving in Melbourne in May. Susan left a month later, boarding the Childe Harold in March 1853, arriving in Geelong in June. These were clearly people seeking a better life, not fortune hunters attracted by the lure of gold. Their tickets would have been in 'steerage', which was a deck below the waterline of the ship. People were crammed into common spaces with no privacy. The ships were sailing vessels and the decks were work areas for the crew, so passengers were allowed very limited access to the deck and then were confined to a tiny area. It would not have been a pleasant voyage.

Job went straight to work as a carter in Melbourne, while Susan was contracted to work for a Geelong man for three years for a salary of £24, including rations.

Job and Susan were not the last of their families to leave their ancestral home. Susan's sister Ellen Rumble married a second cousin and emigrated to Western Australia in December 1853.  Job's brother William Miller emigrated  to Victoria in about 1854.

Within weeks of arriving in Melbourne, hope turned to sadness for Job Miller. His wife Sarah died in Melbourne in June 1851. The cause of death has not been discovered, but circumstantial evidence points to death in childbirth. If so, the child did not survive either. (In those days, a stillborn child would not be baptised and therefore was not given a formal burial - the child would have been buried with the mother). Job was left as a widower with his small son, George, to care for.

History does not record whether Job and Susan knew each other before they emigrated, or how they came to meet up in Australia, but in October 1855 they were married in Melbourne.

The family movements from this point can be followed from the records of births, deaths and marriages.  Their first child, Sarah Jane was born in Melbourne in 1857. Then Thomas was born in Geelong in 1859. Eliza was born in 1861, and Joseph in 1862, both near Kyneton, Victoria. Next came Edward in 1864 and Charles in 1866, both born in Penrith, NSW. Finally, their last child, Alice was born in Hartley, NSW in 1867.

They were still in Hartley in 1869 when two of their children died. Joseph was seven  and George (Job’s son from his first marriage) was 17. 

In 1875 their eldest daughter Sarah married Lionel Clothier in Wellington.

Their movements in NSW are probably connected to the building of the Western railway line. The Railway had reached Penrith in 1863. The Blue Mountains section of the line was built between 1867 and 1869. It reached Bathurst in 1876, Wellington in 1880 and Dubbo in 1881.

Job died at Dubbo in May 1882. His headstone says he was aged 62, but he was only 53.

I have not found any definite trace of Susan after Job died. She was 50 when he died, so it is possible that she remarried. I think that she must have moved to Sydney or perhaps the Central Coast.  Eliza married John Moore at Burwood in 1874, then Alice married William Parry in 1885, also in Burwood. That points to the family home being near Burwood at that time.

Thomas Miller was working on the railway when he was killed in a horrific train accident in 1886. The newspaper reports say that the deceased 'has parents residing at Gosford'. I don't place a heavy reliance on this reference, but it is an interesting pointer that Susan may have been in Gosford.

I would be very interested to hear is anyone knows what became of Susan Miller.

The children:

• George, who was Job's son by his first marriage, died in Hartley in 1869, aged 17.
• Sarah raised a large family with her husband, John Clothier. They lived at Guerie. She died in 1930. 
• Thomas was killed in a work accident at Newcastle in 1886. I don't think he married.
• Eliza had eight children with John Moore. They lived in Dubbo. After John died she lived in Sydney. She died in Gosford in 1921 and was buried at Woy Woy. Interestingly, the funeral notices mention Charles Miller and the Clothier and Moore families, but not Alice or John's families.
• Joseph died in 1886 aged 7.
• John was also known as Edward. He possibly married and had children, but if he did, details have not yet been uncovered. He died in a work accident at Burrenjuck Dam in 1924. His obituary mentions Charles, Mrs Parry and Mrs Clother.
• Charles married Louisa Absalan. They lived at Brooklyn and did not have children. Charles died in 1929. He was possibly close to his sister Alice and her son, Henry Parry, was executor of Charles' will.
• Alice was just 17 when she married Bill Parry, who was 30! They had 12 children, including my grandmother, Lena Parry. Alice died in 1941.

The sad tale of Joseph Rumble and Sarah Bayford

Joseph Rumble and Sarah Bayford were the parents of Susan Rumble and grandparents of Lena Parry. That makes them my 3rd great-grandparents.

Joseph Rumble was born in Great Chishall, Essex in about 1803.  His was probably the first child of Thomas Rumbold and Mary Dowcett story I told a few weeks ago..

Sarah Bayford was born May 1808 in Anstey, Hertfordshire. Her parents were William Bayford and Sarah Wisby who have also been covered recently.

Joseph and Sarah were married in Anstey in October 1826. They settled down in the village of Barkway, which was the next village to Anstey. They had six children born between 1828 and 1840.   Joseph worked as an agricultural labourer. Life would not have been easy for the family with increasing mechanisation of farming and declining wages for farm workers. 

Their eldest child, Anna Maria died in 1840 aged eleven. Then in 1841 Sarah died. She was 33. Joseph was left with five children, all under the age of 12. The youngest child, Mary Ann, was less than a year old.

Joseph moved his small family back to the Little Chishall area, where he continued to work as an agricultural labourer. Mary Ann died in 1844 aged four and was buried in Great Chishall.

Rebecca was 18 when she married Joseph Evennitt at Great Chishall in October 1848. Rebecca died about a year after her marriage, and the death was registered at Royston in the last quarter of 1849. Her burial has not been discovered. I guess it is reasonable to assume that Rebecca died in childbirth.

In 1851 Joseph was living at Little Chishall when the census was taken. This census gives a little more detail and Joseph was shown as a widower, aged 48, an agricultural labourer and born in Little Chishall. Living with him were his daughter Susan 19 and son Joseph 13.  Joseph Jr died soon after the census and was buried in Great Chishall.

Thomas’s daughter Ellen was working as a servant on the farm of Thomas Pilgrim at Great Chishall when the census was conducted. 

In 1861, the census shows Joseph was 58 and living as a lodger at 92 Malting Yard Great Chishall. He was still an agricultural labourer.  By this time his surviving children Susan and Ellen had had both emigrated to Australia. They had both married and had families of their own in Victoria and Western Australia. Thomas could not read or write, so he would probably have had no news from his children, unless it was through the other relatives or acquaintances who had their own children in Australia.

In the 1871 census Joseph gave his age as 70. He was a servant at 103 Bridge Farm and his calling was shepherd.  By this time, Susan, was living in at Wellington in New South Wales with her husband Job Miller and six children. Ellen was living at Greenough in Western Australia with her husband James Rumble (a second cousin). They had eight children.

Joseph died 1873, aged 69. He was buried in Great Chishall. 

As I write up this family story, I was struck by the sadness that Joseph must have experienced through his life. His working life may have been tough, but as 1840 dawned, he was married with five children and one on the way. 14 years later he is living alone without any contact with his immediate family. His wife and four of his children had died and his two remaining adult daughters had emigrated to Australia. I like to think that he was happy that his grandchildren would have better opportunities in Australia than he had experienced in his homeland. But it must have been a lonely existence for his last 20 years.

There is an interesting issue in this story for anyone doing family history work themselves. The villages of Great Chishall and Little Chishall present a problem for the search engines. First, they have moved from Essex into Cambridgeshire in more recent history, but also the spelling of the names have changed to 'Chishill'. Some of the family history websites standardise the spelling of place names used in searches, so if you put 'Chishall' into the search, it may get changed to 'Chishill'.  But it is the old spelling in the records. I have found it very difficult and at times frustrating at times!

As is my normal practice, the draft chapter on this couple is now up on the website, with the resources used.

Job and Jane Miller of Elmdon, Essex

I am following Lena Parry's maternal ancestry for now as the families involved are all from the same district of England. Job Miller and Jane Corbey were the great-grandparents of Lena Parry, making them my 3 x great grandparents.

Job was born in Elmdon, Essex in March 1790. His parents were Joseph Miller and Sarah Burgess.  Job is a biblical name and is pronounced to rhyme with 'Robe'.

Jane Corbey was born in Elmdon in June 1794. Her parents were James Corbey and Jane Deane. 

The ancestral roots of both Miller and Corbey families are in the villages around Elmdon. Some parts of the family can be traced to the late 1500s, almost to the point where parish records were first established. 

Job Miller and Jane Corbey were married at St Nicholas Church in Elmdon in May 1819.  They set up home in Elmdon and Job worked as a ‘Woodward’, which was a forester or gamekeeper. They had seven children born between 1820 and 1836.

Job died in 1848 aged 59 and was buried at Elmdon.  After her husband’s death, Jane worked as an agricultural labourer.  Jane died in 1867 aged 73.  She was also buried at Elmdon.

We can find out a lot more about Job and Jane's family than earlier generations, mainly because of the census records. The first census of the UK was conducted in 1841, and then every 10 years after that. many of the original census returns have survived, and each census added a bit more detail to what was recorded about each person. The 1841 census was the most basic, but it still gives is a very good picture of the family.

Each line gives us the name, age and occupation of a person and whether they were born in the county in which they were now living. In the above example that I have extracted from one of the two columns on the page, you can see Job, Jane and five of their seven children. Two daughters, Elizabeth and Sarah, are not listed, because they were both working as servants in other homes (see below).  The word under occupation for Thomas is 'Son' and the word beside Job Jr and William is 'Do', an abbreviation of 'ditto'! Eliza and Edward are listed as 'Daughter' and 'Son' respectively.

In the 1851 Census we get more details such as marital status and date of birth. We also often get the name of the street or the name of the house. The level of detail increases slowly over the decades. Census records are usually released after 100 years are are available through some, if not all the major online family history websites. That means that for the UK at least, you can get up to the 1920s. But don't hold your breath for Australia! While summary records are available for the colonial period, the census records after federation were not preserved - they were destroyed! It was government policy to destroy census forms after statistical analysis was completed. This changed after 1996 and now you can choose whether your records will be preserved.

A final tip for any other family history researchers. The indexing of census records is a bit haphazard, and it sometimes pays to do a bit of double-checking or manual page-turning. In the case of this family, the records for Elizabeth and Sarah had been wrongly transcribed on ancestry.com.au. I found them by searching on findmypast.com.au. 

• Elizabeth is listed as 'Elizabeth Phillips' in the neighbouring district of Wenden Lofts. 
• Sarah is listed as 'Sarah Milkes on page 2 of the Elmdon returns. Her family above are on page 10.

These mistakes are understandable when you see the documents the transcribers worked from, but I think they are easier once you have a little bit of context.  See the original entry for Elizabeth Miller below.

Elizabeth is the second line. I can see how someone could read 'Phillips', but once you know it could be 'Miller'I think it is easier to see. It is easy to do some checking to see if there was a Sarah Phillips from the local area (people rarely moved far), and there are none in the right timeframe. Another clue might be the two younger girls listed below Elizabeth and also servants at the same house. Rebecca and Mary Corby were probably born in Elmdon in 1824 and 1826 respectively and they are Elizabeth's cousins. Their father was James Corby, Jane Corbey's older brother - the spelling of the surname varies.